By the time I reached the refuge dawn was well on it's way, and a thick fog had settled in pockets above and among the wetland. As I headed toward the ponds several White-tail Deer greeted me along the road, but were not up to posing for photos and they all darted away into the mist. A single young buck stopped to look back and I quickly snapped his photo, and then he too was gone.
The early morning fog and mist on the pond was dramatic indeed! It was thick enough in places to obscure anything that may have been in camera range, but I could hear what seemed like hundreds of Pheasants, Red-winged and Yellow-headed Blackbirds, Canada Geese and numerous other waterfowl that I have yet to identify. As I was walking along the levy between the ponds, a flurry of movement caught my eye and I instinctively reached for my camera. Not quite certain what I was looking at, I snapped some photos, hoping something would turn out. What I ended up with was an image of a Bald Eagle being chased by a Red-winged Blackbird!
I managed a number of shots of the cattails, backlit by the every brightening sky, and then the sun came up and created an even more dramatic scenery.
I spent a few hours there at the ponds, trying in vain to capture photos of the small "puddle ducks" that swan just out of range of my camera's seemingly inefficient zoom lens. But what it lacked in telephoto it more than made up for in panorama of the breathtaking scenery all around me. Had I been using film I believe I would have gone through a dozen rolls in the first two hours alone!
Shortly after the sun came up the fog began to burn off, leaving me with an incredibly blue sky and an urge to discover more areas of the refuge I had not yet explored. I headed up the east side nature trail, a three mile round trip, part of which was uphill to an overlook of the entire wetland area. What a spectacular view with the Bitterroot Mountains in the background!
My "few hours" at Metcalf turned into an entire day (eight and a half hours to be exact), and my last effort before heading home was to capture a photo of a Sandhill Crane that had landed near the road. It was a bit difficult to photograph it among the reeds and cattails, but I did manage a few shots.
I then headed home with 383 photos locked up in the memory card, and a fully productive photographic day!
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